Home >  Local News >  Neighborhoods

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

By M. Ferguson Tinsley, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Silver jets plowing into the World Trade Center's towering glass and steel. Smoke rising from a blackened trench in the Pentagon's white walls. A yawning crater in a Somerset County field. Pictures frozen in the mind.

No one will forget Sept. 11, 2001.

	Related articles Terror transformed: Art students found best of themselves as America found best of itself after day of horror Viewpoint: Letting history heal Cranberry man who lost mother, sister: 'I'm still in disbelief'

On its first anniversary today, groups and individuals are still grappling with its effects.

In the northern suburbs, many are attending commemorative events and services, most held by churches. Although Islamics have no worship center in the northern suburbs, they may go to the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh in Oakland to examine what Sept. 11 did to their lives.

Church leaders say they continue to see emotional upheaval among people.

"Everything has changed on one hand," said the Rev. Mark Englund-Krieger of Parkwood United Presbyterian Church in Hampton. "On the other hand, nothing has changed."

Englund-Krieger said that members of his congregation, along with many others in the United States, are struggling to return to a normalcy that has been permanently knocked off its foundation while also coming face to face with our country's vulnerability as well as our own.

"It's because of the bouncing between those two that all the fear and uncertainty comes back up again," he said.

"Christians have always understood the mystery of God's created world. For some reason known only to God, this kind of evil exists and hurts very deeply. [Sept. 11] is just confirmation of that," he said. "Our faith that God really is in control makes [his sovereignty] more real and more necessary."

For the Rev. Duane Morford of Ingomar United Methodist Church in Franklin Park, Sept. 11 marks a day of immeasurable horror and trauma but also a moment to remember who God is and the hope of life.

"I think ... there are a lot of folks who see God as playing primarily a role of protection," he said. "We've been well-protected. The suffering [here] hasn't been of the magnitude you see in some nations."

Morford said God's character was in no way impugned by Sept. 11. On the contrary, God has shown himself through the heroics of the day and through continual support for survivors, he said.

"When this happened, some began to question the protection of God," Morford said. "It caused us to ask the question of the character and nature of God. The fundamental character of God is love and God is always the author of good. God is not the author of ... evil. God is always trying to reconcile things to good."

Dalia Mogahed, outreach program coordinator at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, said her fellow Muslims are memorializing the day by opening a dialogue with non-Muslims.

Because of Sept. 11,"we realized how closed and isolated we had become," she said. "Due to that, there was such fertile ground for all the misunderstandings that happened after the tragedy."

All 19 hijackers responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 people on Sept. 11 have been identified as Muslims. Because of that, some Muslims around the country have been targeted for mistreatment by non-Islamics. Some have been detained by law enforcement for questioning. Still others have been ordered off commercial flights.

Mogahed said the center's program today will endeavor to teach and aid understanding of her community.

"The goal for this program is to help people in their healing process," she said. "It is a chance for people to come in a friendly, laid-back, nonthreatening way to get to know their Islamic neighbors."

As for the televised celebration among Arabs in the Middle East upon hearing about the Sept. 11 attacks, "that kind of behavior was really exploited by the media," Mogahed said.

"What they saw in those attacks was their enemy's supporter getting a taste of what they get every day in their lives. The loss of human life in this country was not being celebrated," she added, specifically referring to Palestinians.

James Lennox, director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy of Science, said understanding rather than comfort is what he'll seek today.

Lennox, who was raised in a Christian home but later moved away from those beliefs because life gave him "no good reason to believe in God," said Sept. 11 has brought more meaning to his work and why he does it.

"The way I view the events has more to do with what I see as the underlying causes of those events," he said. "I think a certain kind of religious fanaticism is partially responsible for what we've seen. The idea that a selfless sacrifice for one's faith is a cardinal virtue ... you see it in spades in the hijackers."

Lennox said such a narrow view of religion speaks to hatred of America's strong individualism, of its ingrained dedication to the pursuit of happiness. He said logic, reasoning and scientific understanding of life rather than religion can prevent the kind of fanaticism the hijackers displayed.

"One of the things I've been thinking [since Sept. 11] is that my life as a philosopher is very much devoted to helping people think about ... what it means to be a reasonable, rational being."